As usual, the latest Apple operating system upgrade is stranding quite a few unhappy users with broken machines. This time it's iOS4, which was released for some older iPhone models on Monday.
Apple's products often appeal to non-technical users and some are getting bitten when they try to upgrade. Whereas any half-competent …

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Apple Fail

I have abandoned the iOS4 update to my 3G, after 30 mins the progress bar got to about 2%. Even though i did a manual back up through iTunes, it completed in about 25mins!!! Why is it taking soooooooooooooo long during the update??? More iPhone Fail here

RE

I'm a techie and it bit me

I did do the backups, none of them will restore. I've had to factory reset but if I then try and restore any backup it just locks the phone up. Arrrrrrggggghhhhhhhh. I'm going to try this http://www.reincubate.com/labs/iphone-backup-extractor-how-extract-files-iphone-backup-windows/#/res/i/labs/iphonebe/3_wizard.png tomorrow and see if that works

Paying beta testers?

It always amazes me the sheer eagerness that I observe in my fellow iPhone owners. The millisecond Apple release an upgrade it's downloaded and installed. As for a safety net, I thought that once Apple shipped an OS update they stopped signing the old one, so no going back to OS3. I'm gonna leave it a week to see what 'undocumented features' appear before I even think about running the update.

re>Paying beta testers? → #

Numbers

As always, The Register jumps on a few problems and acts like the sky is falling.

1. Every time you post one of these "Apple product is failing" stories, I ask the same thing - and you have never followed through: HOW MANY FAILED? There are tens of millions of iPhones out thetre. A few dozen or even hundred or thousand would be an insignificant number - especially since youc an reset and then proceed.

2. In this case, I'll also ask:" "how many of these updates failed because the owner had jailbroken the phone?" I'm willing to bet that many of them were jailbroken - which is the reason Apple doesn't support it - it can break things, particularly when you upgrade.

I know it's too much to ask, but PLEASE - how about some responsible journalism?

Backup Shmackup

Smugness is inappropriate. Backup and restore is part of the automated process, and that's where my upgrade went wrong. And it wasn't impatience--I'm perfectly used to leaving stuff overnight to finish: in this case, it kept on crapping out with an error -34, about which all I can find is someone else saying that nothing can be found about error -34--maybe it's a sub-clause of Catch 22.

When you get out from under religious wars and the playground, the point of Apple stuff is that you give up some things in exchange for a smooth user experience. In this case, for me and apparently quite a lot of people, it's back to the days of Windows 9x.

A day isn't long to wait before doing the upgrade, but there are so many people wanting to bash Apple that I thought there'd be a big fuss if anything was going wrong. Hataz, FAIL.

3g with IOS4 sux

EXCUSE ME ????!!!???

Surely the one and only point of a strict app vetting is to make sure that the whole ecosystem evolves seemlessly. And what do we have here? A level of backward compat that would ashame even a Microsoft software engineer. At the very least the Beast from Redmond has an excuse: they cannot be held responsible for the strange behavior of 3rd-party apps. But in the present case there is NO 3-rd party app whatsoever. Everything is vetted by Apple, Apple gets the image rights for every single app that is available on the store. The developpers HAVE to surrender their image rights to Apple in order to get on the platform, it's part of the TC. Also, Apple holds the developpers by the nuts, with the power to remove an app from the store without justification. That is the whole point: Apple basically owns every single app available through the store, and it is a prominent part of Apple's marketting strategy (some might say "it's their only argument'). It just works, and you get a lot of apps that we vetted so they are guaranteed to work.

So WHAT? OS upgrades just break app compatibility, something that even Microsoft stopped doing a decade ago -even though they never got to control the ecosystem for fear of antitrust suits-?

Apple: it just works*

Apple: more evil than Microsoft even dared to think they might be in their glorious days.

@Juan Inamillion

Heh heh... Of course here in England the fishing season has just started...

Lovely to see all those post by the generic 'Anonymous Coward'. Yes I use a pseudonym but at least that makes my posts recognisable.

The vast majority of iPhone owners have, as mentioned earlier, had no problem with the update. FYI no-one I know (and I'm currently working in IT for a VERY large international publishing company) has had a problem either. Not very scientific, but gives a flavour of the general consensus, IMHO.

No not smug at all actually, in fact I'm as wary of updates/upgrades as the next person, whether for Apple or Microsoft. But articles like this should be confined to the kiddie-scripting forums where there are plenty of ignorant, opinionated and pathetic attitudes to go round.

Come on El Reg, you're supposed to be 'reporting'. If it's an op-ed piece then at least put 'Opinion' at the start of the article.

(Report: give a spoken or written account of something that one has observed, heard, done, or investigated.)

Upgraded Fine

I upgraded fine to iOS4 on a 3GS. I experienced the Google Sync issue, but that was Google's fault, and was rectified within 24 hours. I always do upgrades as a Factory Restore though, making a Backup before hand.

Is this the local Apple bashing forum?

I've noticed the anti-Apple fanbois are out in considerable numbers.

I updated to iOS4 myself yesterday. The update went smoothly, although 35 minutes for an update is a bit slow in my opinion. Having said that, I'm not very patient. I haven't noticed any problems with the OS myself. WiFi works just fine, 3G is the same,everything runs smoothly and responsive.

I am under the impression that the battery drains a bit faster, even when no apps are running in the background.

fine here

worked fine for me on my 3gs 32gb and also on my wifes 3gs 16gb. only app that doesnt now work is the itv world cup one but thats itvs issue and they are fixing that (will they manage to release it before the end of the world cup is anybodys guess)

The only problem I had...

...was getting iTunes to actually do the update. It seems that you need iTunes 9.2 for the update to work; earlier versions will offer to update your iPhone to iOS4 but not do so. The issue is that in some cases iTunes 9.1.3 won't update to 9.2; if this happens, the cure is to go to the iTunes page on Apple's site, manually download and upgrade (it's very smooth) and then do the iPhone update.

For a 3GS, the most useful feature is that Mail now supports threading and if you have multiple accounts you can view a common inbox rather than have to navigate between them. Also, the camera seems to shoot much faster now.